[Charles Platt is senior writer for WIRED Magazine and an author and
former science fiction editor when he's not enjoying his "retirement"
in northern Arizona. I don't know the answer to Charles' question,
but perhaps my distinguished readers will?]
Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2001 01:10:52 -0400 (EDT)
From: Charles Platt <cp@panix.com>
To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
Cc: <cp@panix.com>
Subject: stem cell speech
Matt, I am baffled that I have not read, anywhere, a suggestion from
anyone that George Bush has no constitutional right to set science policy.
His speech on stem cell research included a statement that he had decided
to proceed cautiously. How does he have the right to make such a decision?
Will there be an executive order?
This in turn raises the question of how Congress has any right to tell
parents what they may or may not do with their zygotes. Control of federal
funding is one thing; but I sense a desire to go beyond that, and pass
legislation similar to the anti-cloning act which seems destined to become
law.
Where's the constitutional excuse for this? In the tired old Interstate
Commerce Clause?
I am not a lawyer or a constitutional scholar, so I may have missed
something here. But what troubles me the most is that I have seen no
commentators or op/ed writers raising the basic issue of control. Maybe I
just don't read the right news sources--or maybe everyone has become so
accustomed to centralized authority, extending all the way down to our own
genes, the spectacle of a president determining science policy rouses no
surprise.
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